


The Illogic of Love

by Areiton



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Games, M/M, POV Spock, Pining, Shore Leave, sex with strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9262112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: There is no logic in jealousy.There is less in love.But then, neither is there logic in Jim Kirk, and I have known that long before I chose to stand at his side.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first dip of my toes in writing of Star Trek, and I owe much thanks to [Catchclaw](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw) for her helpful beta of this.  
> As for everything else--enjoy, and be gentle. It's my first time. <3

There is no logic in jealousy.

I know that.

But then, neither is there logic in Jim Kirk, and I have known that long before I chose his side to stand at.

 

* * *

 

 

I watch Jim from the place at the bar where the captain abandoned me.

I’ve seen this game before. Years at Jim’s side, it has become as familiar as the halls of the ship we both love, as familiar as the cadence of his breath when we spar.

Jim enjoys games, and this one more than most.

He smiles (a private smile, one he rarely uses in the company of others) at me over the head of his chosen lover for the night, and I look away, the tips of my ears burning in a most annoying way.

“Chocolate martini,” the bartender says, sliding the drink across the slick surface to me.

I consider the drink I didn’t order, and then look across the bar to where Jim is being pulled onto the dance floor. This is the game and the way he would play it. I stare at the drink and tell myself that simple truth. I could refuse and he would never mention it. But.

This will make him happy.

I take the drink and turn away from Jim and the Orion girl and remind myself.

There is no logic in jealousy.

 

* * *

 

 

I lose track of him when an Andorian joins me, and if I had not consumed three point two three chocolate martinis, each sent by my captain, that would bother me more than it does.

As it is, she is distracting and I am willing to be distracted.

It takes three point four songs that I only barely register before I grip the Andorian by the wrist and pull her from the bar. I feel, for one second, his hot gaze, burning against my skin and I almost let her go, almost go to him, almost set aside the things that lay silent between us.

Then it's gone, his gaze, and her touch on my back is a low banked heat, arousal spilling through it and I put him firmly from my mind and take her to a small dark alley.

She deserves better than this, but I won't give it.

She deserves a bed and the comfort of my ship, the weight of me holding her to the bed in my quarters. She deserves the press of my lips against hers, the sharp bite of my teeth, and the tangle of our fingers.

She deserves so much more than I give her, pushed into a dark alley. Even when she gasps in pleasure, her voice high and sweet in my ear while I move within her, I know that she deserves more.

I know that I won't give it.

When it's over, I take her to her friends in the bar and pay for their drinks. I am thankful that Jim coaxed me out of my uniform for tonight, that in the black jeans and dark knit sweater, I have some anonymity.  

I look for him, even knowing I won't find him.

The captain is gone and I know what he expects.

It doesn't make it easier. There is a disturbing desire to find him, to drag him away from her, the nameless girl who has captured his attention, to pull him away and back to the ship.

Back to me.

I push that feeling firmly away, behind my mental shields where it belongs and call to the _Enterprise_.

One to beam up.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time Jim played this game, I was...confused. I did not understand the way he could take another to bed so easily and then smile at me from the center chair, all bright amusement and sated pleasure. (The captain’s smile, invincible, number fifteen)

Then, I still believed in avoidance. In retreat instead of confrontation.

In unfailing logic.

I was, admittedly, deceiving only myself, but he allowed it.

I avoided him for two point three eight weeks before he cornered me in the lift and demanded, angry indignation and a sheen of hurt, why the fuck I was avoiding him.

I couldn't answer.

_There is no logic in jealousy._

Words I couldn't speak, a confession I refused to give, and I felt him wilt. Felt him pull away just a little, so that not every sense was full of him, so that when I inhaled it was not the rich right promise of him, of wild open space and the warmth of home that burrowed into his skin. Logic said Jim smelled of sweat and soap and apples, with the faintest undercurrent of the engine rooms, his favorite haunt.

Logic could not explain why, when he stood too close (not close enough) he smelled like _home._

 _You can't avoid me forever_.

That was a threat or a promise, spoken that first time, in a turbolift where he stood too close and I clung to logic and reason and clenched my hands together behind my back, tight enough that they hurt and my nails cut into my palms because I would reach for him if I didn't.

I would reach for him and I _couldn't._

His eyes held mine, too bright and hurt and I nodded once, the picture of a Starfleet officer, and then I retreated.

 

* * *

 

 

It took, that first time, another two weeks to return to normal. To look at him and not see the gleam in his eyes as the human girl pressed against him.

To look at him and not _want._

 

* * *

 

 

It was the third time that he took me aside, before we reached the bar. I knew what was coming, the steady stream of drinks and his wide happy smile (anticipatory and eager, the smile that signalled excitement, number ten) that would turn sleepy and hungry when the right girl happened along. It was something I anticipated, and the thought of it almost kept me on the _Enterprise_ while the bridge crew departed for shore leave.

I had, in fact, begun to prepare for an experiment when the Captain shook his head and said, firmly and yet pleading, _you're coming with me._

I have never been good at saying no to him.

_You should loosen up, Mister Spock. Find a pretty girl. Relax a little._

I eyed him, and if there was something dangerous in my voice when I responded, Jim ignored it. _Is that an order, Captain?_

He smiled (the one that was diplomacy with teeth. Of his ninety two unique smiles it ranked seventh on my list of preferred.)

_Does it need to be?_

It wasn't an order but it was a challenge and it would make him happy.

The girl was Orion, with a smile that reminded me of him, and a tongue talented in ways I hadn't quite imagined before that night.

I have an eidetic memory. But what I remember most about that shore leave was the way Jim watched me, after.

 

* * *

 

 

It becomes pattern. Jim’s favorite game. Once I thought he’d call it off. My captain might play the innocent hayseed, but he’s one of the smartest individuals I know and his perception is near perfect.

_We don’t have to--_

I eyed him, for a moment, cast in red light from the dance floor and considered that he would look exceptional on Vulcan, that pleasing gold and blue against the stark red beauty.

_Enjoy your leave, Captain._

He smiled then (small, private, the one he only gave me when I did something he was startled and pleased by, my favorite smile. Illogical to have a favorite, and yet.)

His hand brushed my skin, a deliberate move that left me shaken as he moved away, already intent on the girl.

 

* * *

 

 

Jealousy is illogical.

But, so too is Jim.

And he, I have learned, quite likes when I am illogical.

 

* * *

 

Jim returns to the ship three hours after I do. Standing orders sees me informed the moment he requests beam up, and for a moment, I pause in the middle of my experiment. Nothing changes from one moment to the next.

But my breath comes easier, when he returns, like a tension I didn’t realize was there slips free of the ship. Like we have both awaited his return.

 _That_ though, is the very height of illogic, and I push it down, defiantly, and turn back to my experiment.

 

* * *

 

 

Jim’s game is familiar and the rules are clear.

It happens only on shore leave.

He tells me before it begins--not always with words, but Jim is very clear to make his intentions known to me, and I have learned to read him.

His safety is never compromised, and it is always a girl.

His rules, and mine.

There was only once when he broke them.

Only once when I did.

 

* * *

 

 

Jim and I had argued, three days prior, and maybe that contributed to it. There was a dissonance about us that made him short tempered on the bridge and me unable to settle. Even meditation didn’t ease my disquiet.

Perhaps, looking back, I should have known.

The where and when make very little difference. A bar, a starbase, a shore leave overdue, a captain angry with me and a crew anxious for the release of duties.

It was, in almost all ways, unremarkable and familiar. It was as all of these nights are.

I expected the game, even without Jim telling me it was coming. His mind was sharp and bitter enough that I could predict that he would chose that night, need the release and the tease.

There wasn’t a pattern to it. Sometimes it was the first night of shore leave, and sometimes it was the last, and sometimes it fell in the middle. There’s no logic behind it--with Jim there never is. (Thirty two percent the first night. Ten point three five percent the last night. Fifty seven point six five the nights between. He is maddening in his lack of pattern.)

That night was the same as every night before it. Shore leave, together. (I wonder that neither of us considered leave without the other.) A bar that could be found on a thousand worlds in a thousand cities. Fanciful perhaps, yet logic held they were all the same. Jim Kirk had a particular kind of taste, and the universe itself seemed all too willing to give him what he wanted.

It was unremarkable in all ways.

Except for _him_.

 

* * *

 

 

He inspected me with the usual air of negligent disregard that I had come to expect. I returned the stare with my own curious inspection.

James Kirk was, as ever, an aesthetically pleasing creature, in old worn denim, and a faded shirt that fit his shoulders and torso too well.

His eyes, though, were sharp and a little bit angry as he watched me, as he turned and stepped onto the transporter pad.

Even then, I did not feel the stirring of concern.

He ordered quickly and drank more than normal, but even that didn’t arouse my suspicion.

It was only when he smiled at me (dark and dangerous, smile eighty seven, the one that made my stomach turn and illogical fear to rise in my mind.) that concern gripped me.

And still, I didn’t voice it, curious and perhaps still thinking of our recent argument.

It was when Jim turned his predatory smile on the conquest of the night, did I realize how much the game had changed.

 _No, Jim._ I spoke too late.

His eyes found mine, from across the bar, registering my protest and ignoring it, as the man he was seducing leaned too close, touched too much, spoke too low--Jim held my gaze and _touched_ him, and it was different than the other nights.

There was none of the same amusement in him as when he watched me and seduced a girl, and there would be no laughter when he came to me, after.

I breathed deeply, focused on control. Pushed the feelings I did not want to feel aside, locked them behind my shields, turned away.

But not before I saw it.

Saw his smile (mean and hurt, smile ninety, I hated that smile) before the male--human, tall, with dark hair and narrow shoulders--kissed him.

 

* * *

 

 

I left him there, alone. We never did that. When I left Jim in a bar, it was with Mister Scott or Doctor McCoy, occasionally Sulu and Chekov. I did not leave him alone, with a male whose threat I had not ascertained, drunk and in a potentially hostile situation.

But.

That night.

Logic said the male was not hostile and Jim would come back to the ship bearing only the bruises he chose, and the thought burnt bitter in my gut and even meditation did not ease my--

Feelings.

I was, irrationally angry.

And jealous.

There was no logic in jealousy.

And yet.

 

* * *

 

 

I didn't have to avoid him, after that night. He avoided me, for a week, until the bruises from _his_ hands faded, and when he finally came to me...

_Spar with me tonight, Mister Spock._

I stared at him from across the table, and Uhura watched us, tense at my left hand. I wanted to dismiss him. Wanted to dismiss his request.

Instead, I gave a small nod and ignored his smile (relieved, guilty, hopeful. Smile number twenty four) as he walked away, joined Doctor McCoy.

I quelled the urge to go with him, to take the place at his side.

 _My_ place.

I returned my attention to Uhura, and if she found the silent encounter odd, she didn’t comment.

That first night, when we sparred, I could see the anger and the guilt in him, but more I could see the bruises, the ones that marked his hips and his arms, the faded bites on the curve of his throat.

I was angry. An emotional response that Jim had always been too skilled at pulling from me.

Once I would have run from it.

Once I saw it as a weakness.

By then, it was merely a fact I had come to accept. Vulcan is hot. Humans are illogical. The stars and emptiness of space are fascinating. And Jim Kirk made me feel.

I attacked him, and he let me, barely defended himself at all, until he was groaning and every bruise was fresh and dark, _my_ marks on his body. It was only after I could no longer see another man’s marks on him that I ceased my attack.

He swayed where he stood, and I glared at him, unruffled but shaking.

I wanted to carry him to McCoy.

I wanted to kiss apologies into his skin.

I wanted, badly, to hit him again.

Bending slightly, I retrieved my shirt and turned away.

His voice stopped me. _It won't happen again._ His mind, brushing mine as he stood too close to my back, felt like that rare thing that Kirk only ever was with me.

Vulnerable.

I looked at him over my shoulder and he gave me a smile. (Weak, faltering, it appeared most often when he is hurt and trying to hide it, but I had never seen it directed at me, not like that, and I wished to never see it again.)

I nodded once, and left without a word.

 

* * *

 

 

He did not return to me until the bruises were gone. I saw him on the bridge, and spoke to him as any First would to his Captain, but I was distant, and he was unfailingly polite, and the quiet camaraderie was absent.

There was no chess games, no shared meals, no gentle prodding from me as he complained about his paperwork. There was no sparring and no quiet conversations on the observation deck, where he would talk about the stars and his childhood and mindless human stories, and I would watch him.

McCoy watched us, scowling and bad tempered and concerned, and I--

I hid in my labs and in mediation and tried very hard to hate him more than I missed him.

 

* * *

 

 

When he finds me, he smells clean and fresh. He stands close, close enough to touch, but waiting.

 _She was pretty_.

I nod, and make a note, gauging the growth of the hybrid vines before I respond. _They always are._

Jim laughs at that, and it ripples across me. This close, emotional transference is inevitable and I know what he wants.

I ignore him, and continue measuring the growth of plants. Sulu will be pleased with the results, I believe.

Jim waits, almost vibrating with impatience, and when I reach for my tricorder, my hand brushes his arm, want, hunger, the hint of desperation, something else, spins through the contact, coating me like a sticky sweet web.

I give him a hard stare, and he flashes an innocent smile (a lie, one so often believed, smile thirty seven) as he steps away.

Always, with him, this is a game.

 

* * *

 

 

Jim was a blank slate, when I found him, weeks after that bar and _him_ , and his eyes were distant and afraid when I sat across from him.

His quarters felt strange, almost unfamiliar.

_I’m sorry._

It was the first thing said, and it eased some of the irrational fury in me, the anger that meditation and sparring, and all the skills of my mental training could do nothing to quell.

Even seeing the skin I had covered in bruises had not eased it the way his words did.

_I’m sorry, Spock._

I looked at him and his words felt so honest.

 _Do not do that again._  

He nodded, and I pulled him to me, and his emotions slammed into me as I kissed him, as his fingers twisted with mine and I took a fistful of hair, dragging him to where I wanted him, biting at his lip as I pushed him down, onto his bed.

Our bed.

I mapped his body with my lips, that night, kissed apologies into the places my bruises had been. And when he was panting, begging, my name a choked thing on his lips, when I could feel the pulse of his cock against my lips, the orgasm almost but not quite there, I pulled away. Stared at him from a distance while I stripped.

I licked him open while he bit off curses and moaned into the mattress, until he was wet and loose and ready for me, and when I pressed into him with my body, I pressed bruises into his hips with my fingers.

It was angry and apologetic and hard and hurt. Only at the end, when I could feel the hitch of sobs in his body, did I tangle our fingers together and press myself to the length of his back and pour my love and forgiveness through the bond to him.

He came, then, hot and wet across our bed that I had avoided for weeks, babbling want and apology in my mind as I spilled in his body, and whispered love in his ear.

 

* * *

 

 

Jim vibrates impatience, and I finally relent, press him into the bulkhead and lick kisses into his mouth.

This late, with so many on shore leave, we will not be disturbed. I have found that Jim likes the thrill of this, sex where we could be found. And I, as ever, am willing to give him whatever he wishes. I kiss him and sink to my knees and he groans above me.

This too is part of his game. How will I coax him back? How will I erase the touch of a woman that doesn't matter to him?

 _Sock,_ his voice is warm in my mind and I hum contentment around his cock as he thrusts lazily into my mouth.

He's smiling. (I don't know don't care doesn't matter what it means or what it's ranked.)

 

* * *

 

 

He plays a game. It took me years (two point three five years, five shore leaves) to realize what it meant. It took Uhura saying, “He wants you to be jealous.”

It was irrational and ridiculous. Illogical.

Jim was mine. My bondmate, my _t’hy’la,_ my captain, my friend. He was tied to me so deeply and irrevocably that it was not a fact to be debated.

It was simply something I knew. Vulcan was hot. Humans were illogical. The stars and emptiness of space is fascinating. And Jim Kirk is mine.

No female, however enticing, will change that.

“He doesn't care,” Uhura said. And, “Sometimes humans just want to see emotion, Spock.”

 

* * *

 

 

It is illogical. These games he plays and that I indulge them.

As illogical as the flash of jealousy that I feel, despite knowing he is mine, when he turns his smile, (sweet charm, innocent and seductive, number sixty five) on the woman he will seduce. It is illogical to feed him my irritation and arousal through our bond. It is illogical to follow his whims and find a girl to engage in coitus with.

It is illogical to find him and kiss him until the memory of anyone else is drowned in pleasure and the pulse of the bond between us, thick and shining and full of the bright gold of Jim's love.

It is illogical.

But then. So is Jim.

So too is love.


End file.
